Temptress Moon
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Temptress Moon (風月) is a 1996 Chinese film directed by Chen Kaige. It was banned in China for its sexual and drug-related content.
The setting was immediately after the fall of the Qing dynasty. Zhongliang (Leslie Cheung),then a 14 year-old boy, arrives at the Pang estate near Shanghai to live there along with her sister and her husband, Mr. Pang. There, he is treated like a servant more so by his brother-in-law who forces him to kiss his own sister while intoxicated by the effects of the opium, and in revenge he poisons his brother-in-law (among his duties was to prepare his sister's opium pipe and he secretly placed the poison in the pipe) and flees, but a Shanghai gang finds him and embraces him. A few years later, Zhongliang becomes a handsome gigolo blackmailer who seduces rich women to get money. He succeeds beyond his triad's wildest dreams and his boss (Biggie) dotes on him like his own son.
By orders of his boss, Zhongliang returns to the Pang estate to seduce Mr. Pang's daughter Pang Ruyi (Gong Li), the new head of the household, and to blackmail her. Ruyi was also an opium addict, a legacy of the Pang family who like the rest of China could not resist the addiction. However, the hate he once had for the Pang family and his loyalty to the triad starts to wane as they fall in love with each other. Throughout his liaison with Ruyi at the Pang estate, however, he does not openly declare his affections for her as he was haunted by his past and swore never to love ever again using aloofness and his icy nature to quell Ruyi's longing for him.
To resolve this problem, the triad invites Ruyi to Shanghai and show her Zhongliang's real job. She stops loving him and becomes engaged to another man whom she was initially bethrothed to, as Zhongliang tries desperately to get her back. Blinded by jealousy and anger, he poisons Ruyi just before being gunned down by his own gang while trying to sail away in a port.
External links
- IMDb page on Temptress Moon (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116295/)